Baltics24: Day 13 – Vilnius

Vilnius (though the locals barely pronounce the second i) the capital of Lithuania (which is spelt locally as Lietuva) is an interesting place. It’s the second largest city in the Baltics, with just a few less people than Riga, Lithuania is the most populous of the three countries, and as Laura told us yesterday, has a more spread out population (of the 6 cities with more than 100k pop, 4 are in Lithuania).

This morning was the obligatory wander to see where things were, it was also about 30 degrees so a part of the wander was just to find patches of shade. There was an occasional breeze which helped. Vilnius is probably the least flat of the three capitals, with the Vilnia River cutting through to make a valley, with the old town having a slight incline. At the back of the cathedral there’s a hill that just pops up out of nowhere, well kind of two hills, one has a tower, while the other the three crosses monument (it’s known as the Hill of Three Crosses, they are an imaginative bunch here). We strolled around the cathedral, remembering afterwards that there’s a special tile, the “miracle” tile, somewhere around it: that was one end of the Baltic Way a two million people chain spreading to Tallinn in 1989 to tell the soviets where to go. Hopefully we’ll find it before we leave.

We’ve no idea how often it happens, but today a several km stretch of one of the central roads was blocked off to traffic and hundreds of market stalls were set up along the length, selling jewellery, linen, beer, meat, smoked goods, bread, cakes, clothes, books, records, soaps, smelly things, so many things. towards the end there was a park where they appeared to be setting up for some sort of event, so maybe it all ties in with that. Along the way we stopped into a book cafe called Depeche, where I got an iced coffee and a cinnamon scroll, and L got a something with sparkle in the name, which turned out to be lemonade with a shot of coffee. It was … interesting.

We also checked out a pastry shop that had a couple of gf options, and L got a slice of something nutty and meringuey. Vilnius menus/hospitality staff seem a little behind Riga’s when it comes to dietary requirements, and the options are a bit more limited, though in general across the Baltics it seems that having options like gluten free bread, pasta etc are a few years behind. Though they do awesome things with meat and potatoes.

We checked out the Frank Zappa monument. Frank Zappa never came to Vilnius, wasn’t Lithuanian, didn’t have any discernible ties with the place. But he did have some enthusiastic fans here. As the story goes, Vilnius was looking for figures who inspire change and rebellion, and when some fans got wind of this they bugged the council until the bureaucracy caves, and lo Vilnius got a Frank Zappa memorial statue and wall. L spotted some birds nesting in the statue’s nose. There’s a Zappa quote along the lines of a real country needs a beer and an airline — I’m not sure if Lithuania has an airline, but it does have beer.

We’ve popped into a few bookshops on our travels, it’s neat to see books with names we almost recognise (Neuromantas by William Gibson, Kaire Tamsos Ranka by Ursula K. Le Guin) as well as which international writers are available in English (L tells me a lot of these are YA). Sarah J. Maas is just everywhere, as is Rebecca Yarrow. For fantasy/sf, it seems to be mostly UK publishers that I’m seeing, like Gollancz and Jo Fletcher Books.

We also hit a few amber shops today, as Lithuania produces/uncovers about 300% of the world’s amber, or at least it feels like it. There’s amber pretty much everything: jewellery, pens, bottle openers, crosses, carvings, decorations, mini-trees, cutlery, dice, buttons, amber powder, at the hill of crosses yesterday they had amber handled flick knives, I kid you not. About the only thing I haven’t found is an amber handled virgin mary bottle opener, but I’m looking. Lithuania also makes a lot of linen, and we’ve checked out a few shops, so folks better not complain if they get tea towel souvenir pressies.

Our stroll before dinner took us to the Gate of Dawn, the last remaining of original town gates and part of the Lithuanian pilgrimage path. The gate contains the icon painting “Our Lady of the Gate of Dawn”, notable for showing Mary without the infant Jesus (maybe it was sketched when she and Joe called in a babysitter and went for a night on the town, she’s certainly dressed up for it in lots of shiny gold and silver), and despite folks like me making smart-ass comments, is venerated in Lithuanian communities world wide.

Dinner was at Etno Dvaras, which gets lots of listings as one of the best places to get traditional Lithuanian food, i.e. meat and potatoes, and some fish. I went with a starter of peas with a chunky pork sauce, served in a thin pastry basket. This must have been a good winter leftover dish, lots of rehydrated peas, with just enough of the gravy with pork skin/fat chunks to carry the flavour. While i’m a big fan of edible service receptacles, the basket was a bit sweeter than I expected. I followed this with the traditional handmade meat-filled dumplings, and I wouldn’t be surprised if these were the largest dumplings in eastern europe, we’re talking pierogi on steroids, three bites required. They were served with a wonderful sour cream and pork bits sauce, and every bite was awesome. Generous serves, generous amount of stuffing, I am so full. This feast was washed down with a selection of four beers from the Svyturys brewery, their lager, dark lager (lots of good flavour there) and wheat (lovely, balanced between banana and clove), with an additional lager-type beer that wasn’t labelled, but also tasted good.

So walked a lot, ate a lot, did laundry, saw a lot. Another fine day in the Baltics.